Monday, April 01, 2013

Mega Dotcom War

Kim Dotcom has so far avoided extradition to the US on a charge of copyright infringement by his Megaupload operation. Monopoly media interests such as Hollywood want to make an example of him to smash competition and protect their media monopoly. NZ is a pawn in this game, already proven lackeys of Warner Brothers over the Hobbit films, attacking workers rights and offering a big bribe to get the studio to film in NZ. The NACT Government is a pathetic lackey to the US corporate giants, contracting NZ spies and cops to the FBI to illegally raid and arrest Dotcom and his associates.

While they are busy smashing all democratic barriers to their rip, shit and bust policies on behalf of international monopoly capital, they haven’t yet bought the Courts’ compliance. The Appeal Court ignored NZ law which states that evidence of the charge must be presented and that charge be recognised by NZ law. It rejected Dotcom’s request to view the US evidence against him on the grounds that it wasn’t trying the case here. Dotcom has the right to appeal to the Supreme Court and that is likely to run since the Appeal Court ignored NZ law on the basis that the US authorities could be ‘trusted’.

Meanwhile the Dotcom saga reveals much about the current global capitalist crisis winding up the rivalry between imperialist powers and forcing the US ruling class to resort to open abuse of democratic rights and abolishing the separation of the branches of state by fusing bank, corporate, and state power. The US monopoly capitalist system uses military and spy machine to sign up its allies in the mounting showdown with rapidly rising Chinese imperialism.

As Gordon Campbell in Werewolf points out, this case is the first where copyright infringement has been made a criminal charge anywhere including the US itself. The power of Hollywood is evident in bringing this case. Campbell found that the senior Justice Dept prosecutor of Dotcom, Neil MacBride was formerly the “Business Software Alliance’s top antipiracy enforcer and general counsel”, and had been ordered to “take Mega[upload] down” by Vice-President Joe Biden, best mates with MPAA boss Chris Dodd.

The NZ courts are small fry facing this barrage of US pressure at all levels. Let’s see how far the Supreme Court will go in standing up to this pressure. One thing is sure though, the case has opened many peoples’ eyes to the role of monopoly capital in running the US state, and its client states like NZ. Dotcom’s own lawyers found that Mike Ellis boss of MPA of Asia and a “former extradition expert and former superintendent of the Hong Kong police”, was the contact between Biden, Dodd and MacBride, and the NZ Justice Minister Simon Power.

We say that its time NZ workers woke up to the fact that NZ is being fought over by the two big imperialist rivals, the US and China and that to avoid being dragging into a war on the side of either the US or China we have to build common cause with US and Chinese workers to build a working class movement to stop the drive to war at home.

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red rave is the loud mouth of members of the Communist Workers' Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand, committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism. Until March 2010 a member of the Internationalist Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction (FLTI). Now in a Liaison Committee with the Communist Workers' Group (USA) and Revolutionary Workers' Group (Zimbabwe).